Oh, man, this is gonna be fun!
Because if there’s something that gets people (like me) fired up, it’s talking about the potential of time travel and being able to witness historic events.
So, without further ado, let’s see what AskReddit users had to say about this!
1. Look it up.
“Strasbourg 1518, to witness the event where the whole town succumbed to mass hysteria and danced themselves to d**th over 2 months.”
2. Language lessons.
“I have always wanted to go back in time to somewhere around 4500 BC and just record the languages being spoken around the world.
There are entire fields of research that deconstruct proto languages of the languages we speak, but those can only go so far back and don’t account for all the other languages that got abandoned over time.
The only hard part would be choosing how far back in time to go, because humans have speaking languages for a very, very long time.”
3. From a safe distance.
“Assuming I have a safe vantage point on some kind of space ship, I choose the planetary impact that’s believed to have given us the moon.”
4. Fascinating.
“I’d like to see Tenochtitlan before the Spanish destroyed it.
I love reading accounts of the Spanish coming into the Americas for the first time.
When they landed at what is now Corpus Christi, TX, there were so many sea turtles that they couldn’t sleep because it sounded like they were hitting rocks all night.
The Americas were incredibly abundant. I see people commenting that the accounts were exaggerated, and many were, but as an example, the Spanish started forcing mining activity in Zacatecas in the 1500s and there’s still silver being pulled out of those mines today.
The American continent was full of gold, silver and platinum in ways that’s hard to imagine today.”
5. Good answer.
“As a geologist, the Lake Agassiz flood.
During the last glacial period, over 12,000 years ago, there was a massive lake in the middle of the North American continent fed by glacial meltwater. This lake is now known as Lake Agassiz. At its peak, the lake was larger than all of the current Great Lakes combined . Estimates put it at 440,000 square kilometers in area. Most of that water was held in place by glacial and topographic dams.
At the end of the last ice age, the largest ice body containing the lake to the east in Hudson Bay retreated / melted, causing the lake to drain almost completely – in less than nine months . A freshwater lake with tens of thousands of years of history and input, and more fresh water than all other freshwater bodies on the planet at that time combined, drained in less than a year.
The flooding was likely unprecedented, carrying erratics (boulders) the size of small houses hundreds of miles away. As the water drained into Hudson Bay and other outlets, the global sea level rose by 1-3 meters.
Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba, Red Lake, and Lake of the Woods are the largest remnants of Lake Agassiz.”
6. Changing landscape.
“For a long time, the Mediterranean sea was cut off from the Atlantic ocean and the rivers flowing into it were not enough to prevent it drying up completely.
At some point in time, the ocean was able to cut an opening at Gibraltar and millions of cubic meters of water poured into the basin.
That, I would like to have seen.”
7. Historical mystery.
“I’d like to see Otzi the iceman’s last day.
Scientists know almost everything they can about his last few days on earth, but not who he was or why he was m**dered.
It would be interesting to see the answer to those questions.”
8. Imagine that…
“Kepler’s Supernova
Visible to the naked eye, Kepler’s Star was brighter at its peak than any other star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of −2.5. It was visible during the day for over three weeks. Records of its sighting exist in European, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic sources.
It was visible during the day for over three weeks. WOW! Just imagine the magnitude of that explosion… which was visible for 3 weeks during daylight (it was 20,000 light-years away).”
9. That’s cool.
“When the Golden Gate Bridge was finished, my Father was one of the first to walk across it.
He d**d when I was 8. Would love to see him again.”
10. What a moment.
“The premiere of Beethoven’s 9th symphony in Vienna.
The story is that rehearsals were rushed due to time constraints, so Beethoven himself stood next to the orchestra conductor during the performance to give him tempo and dynamic cues. When the last notes sounded, the totally-deaf Beethoven just stood with his back to the audience, not realizing what the response was.
Finally, the soprano soloist went to the maestro and physically turned him around so he could see: the audience standing in full ovation, many jumping up and down on their chairs as they cheered and clapped.”
11. UFOs.
“Roswell, New Mexico, June, 1947.
Let’s see what really crashed out there.”
12. Queen!
“Queen at 1985 Live Aid.
Freddie d**d before I was even born, so even if I could just see him perform live anywhere, anytime would be such a dream come true.”
13. Just a normal day.
“I’ve always just really wanted to know what Anne Boleyn looked like.
I would just want to spend a normal day with her or something.”
14. A day that changed the world.
“December 7, 1941….
So I could sit with my dad on the hill overlooking Honolulu and see it through his eyes and hug my grandmother before she went to work as a nurse and didn’t come home for two days taking care of overflow patients from Trippler Hospital.”
Now it’s your turn!
Tell us what historic event you’d like to travel back in time to see.
Do it in the comments!
